


The Hope That Breaks Us

by RosebudRegiment



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Chapter 123, Confessions, Eventual Smut, F/M, First Times, Hurt/Comfort, Kiyomi's House, Three part series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-22 17:29:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30042222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosebudRegiment/pseuds/RosebudRegiment
Summary: Based on Chapter 123 when the Survey Corps visits Marley for the first time.
Relationships: Levi Ackerman/Mikasa Ackerman
Comments: 21
Kudos: 81





	The Hope That Breaks Us

Mikasa is sure that she has never wanted for anything more than to get off this damned ship.  
  
Sticky against her skin and sharp in her lungs, the air is nothing like the kind carried through the soaring pines and mountains she’s known all her life. Even with Onyankopon's reassurance of their good fortune of clear skies, it’s almost unthinkable to recall that there had once been a time when she would’ve traded anything to experience it.  
  
But, in those days, the sea had only ever edged their world; its horizon a glimmering veil to what was once a promising future. Now, freedom has a new face, and it haunts her everywhere she looks in this vast mirror.  
  
Three and a half years are not enough to prepare her to walk among their foreign enemy, no matter Kiyomi’s confidence in their success at the forum. She’s learned better than to trust in such grandiose hopes, and would sooner walk through a valley of titans if given the option.  
  
Behind her, the lively chatter of her comrades and the volunteers as they walk about the deck only adds to her unease, as it is void of one voice in particular, shut away in the galleys below.  
  
Eren hasn’t spoken to anyone all morning.  
  
Habit tells her not to dwell on it; that he’s merely shaken from the new truths of their war, but even _she_ knows there is no use in denying the change in him since that day in the cellar, anymore than the distance it has brought between them.  
  
A promise in the hinterlands still echoes in her ears as she locks onto a growing dot not far ahead, the floorboards vibrating with an excited stampede towards the bow no more than a moment later, but Mikasa does not join them.  
  
Instead, she chooses to wait alone at the starboard side as the Marleyan shoreline at last widens to meet them, as though moving from her watchful post would somehow allow their enemy time to emerge from the depths and catch them off guard.  
  
It is ironic that, alert as she is, Mikasa doesn’t know that her captain has been studying her from across the deck, all but ignoring Hange’s typical misplacement of enthusiasm about the barnacles that litter the port side of the hull, if only to make sure they don’t fall overboard.  
  
To others, with the possible exception of Armin, Mikasa’s silence is no more characteristic than her hair. It’s an easy mistake, after all. A woman of fewer words than he, understanding her had once presented a struggle for him, too, but mostly because, when he first beheld those blazing eyes, he was reminded so much of himself.  
  
The notion that anyone could possibly understand the affliction of a bereaved soul was just as ludicrous as the prospect of joining the Survey Corps had once been. And yet, one day in the forest that now seemed so very long ago, she proved him wrong. They were the same: bound by desperation to vows unfulfillable to escape the gaping hollow that came with the name of Ackerman.  
  
Oh, yes. Levi knows better.  
  
But, though they are well beyond the barriers of the years before, he won’t press; he’ll keep his distance when he knows he should, but there’s only so long he can stand by and watch as the light within her fades.  
  
Not now that she risks taking him with it.  
  
His thoughts are broken as his ears tune to the sudden silence, but when he seeks out its catalyst, the knowing look Hange gives him does not surprise him anymore.  
  
“I’ll go check on Armin.” The scientist says simply, their goggled eye still shining keenly as they take leave with a smile, and Levi can only wonder if it is a blessing or a curse that his latest secret to the pile was discovered by a character like Hange.  
  
Once satisfied with their integration into the rest of the distracted throng, Levi crosses the deck, pausing for only a moment to study his subordinate’s unsuspecting profile before he slips in beside her, a smirk forming on his lips.  
  
“Don’t look too excited.”  
  
Mikasa’s breath catches at the bluntness of the familiar voice, but the tease, once jeering to her before, is unmistakable to her now.  
  
A rueful smile tugs at her cheeks, but her eyes stay fixed ahead. “But won’t it be so nice to finally pay our enemy a visit?”  
  
He scoffs lightly, though his fists are tense in his pockets. “So long as they behave themselves.”  
  
Guilt tightens Mikasa's mouth as she regards Levi's stoic countenance.  
  
She needn’t ask to know that Zeke was at the forefront of his mind, his tongue wearing vengeance like a sheath every day since Shiganshina; something for which she can’t help but feel responsible, even as she sees Armin chittering away on the deck with the others.  
  
Her hands rise to clench the rusty taffrail, but the shiver that creeps up her spine is not from the coldness of the metal. “If he tries anything, he’s dead,” she says darkly as she lowers her head, the rim of her hat obscuring all but her sneer.  
  
Levi can’t help but chuckle at the sentiment; though almost a head taller in her civilian heels, she looks no more threatening than he does in his zoot suit.  
  
“Sure. Good luck with that in _this_ get-up,” he says with an allusive nod, noticing her confusion. “Compliments to your cousin for being so… _practical_.”  
  
When she doesn’t respond at first, Levi verges on making some form of apology, but Mikasa is used to his open ridicule of the eastern dignitary, just as she has grown accustomed to her own uncertainty of everything about the Azumabitos’ involvement with Paradis.  
  
“Kiyomi seems to know what she’s doing…,” is all she can say in response before her lips purse to more unsettling conclusions; that this whole excursion is no more than a ruse. The forum cannot guarantee them anything, and a disguise can only protect them for so long before something else cracks.  
  
 _Or someone_ , she starts to think, when a warm, gentle weight on her shoulder coaxes her away from those phantom emerald-greens, replacing them with an increasingly familiar refuge of unwavering steel-blues.  
  
“And so will we,” Levi husks, but Mikasa can only stare, frozen in the acute realisation of their intensity, warmth, and something else entirely that she almost banishes from her mind for its sheer absurdity, except that Levi has made no attempts to move, those fathomless eyes keeping her there as if they held a thousand words at the ready, if only a reason she would give.  
  
And though he never expected this moment to take such a turn, when Mikasa begins to lean down, lips that are too delicate to belong to a woman so fierce parting in such an achingly discernible way, for the first time, Levi really thinks that she might.  
  
 _Ahem._  
  
On instinct, Mikasa’s head jerks in the direction of the voice, and the way her face immediately falls is enough to confirm Levi’s suspicions as to its owner before he turns to find none other than Paradis’ christened saviour, who is wearing something akin to disapprobation as his calculating eyes flicker between the two.  
  
“E-Eren…,” she stammers, taking a clumsy step back in her heels from Levi, and the twinge of disappointment this incites in him is not slight, but it’s all too easy to mask it with the wariness he’s recently come to feel around this ever-distant titan-shifter.  
  
“How are you feeling?” Mikasa asks, the heat of embarrassment still tingling in her cheeks, but whether it’s the aftermath of such close proximity to her superior or shame, she doesn’t allow herself to ponder.  
  
Eren shrugs indifferently, his eyes flitting again to Levi, who merely stares back in mute observation.  
  
The silence that had been electric a moment ago now seems to suffocate even the open expanse of the sea, and while she cannot yet acknowledge why, Mikasa wracks her brain for something to puncture it; _anything_ …  
  
But before she can, the ship’s horn startles their attention to their imminent docking, and just like that, a staggering moment on the starboard side is swallowed by the presence of the rest of the Survey Corps, though Mikasa and Levi both know that no amount of cheerful banter or foreign landscape will be enough to forget the distance that had just shortened in more than one way between them.  
  
After Eren, whose critical gaze still lingered even as he awaited his turn to alight, they are the last to step off the gangway with a dimming sky to greet them, and when Mikasa’s feet finally touch Marleyan soil, she can only hope that it’s one step closer to freedom.

**Author's Note:**

> So... I've been obsessed with the idea of RivaMika getting it on at Kiyomi's for ages and ended up writing this little whatchamacallit, so please just know that the outcome of this is gonna be steamy steam. If that ain't for you, then you will be able to read all the way to JUST before the end of chapter 3, the final chapter, without needing to avert your eyes. 
> 
> Also, I'm being so naughty with not posting my update of To Build a Home, but I swear I'm so close; still just editing things to make sure everything lives up to the first chapter. *hides behind table* please don't hate me too much for this one. ^///^


End file.
